VMware Appliance Challenge ideas

[rcardona2k]

I can't possibly implement all of these ideas by the end of May, so I'm freely putting them out there to seed ideas and because I would want all of them!

I thought these up over lunch today.

N-in-1 Linux Installer Distro Picker[/b]: Package all these Linuxes on a DVD.iso: Open SuSE, Fedora, Darn Small, Puppy, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, etal. and pick one. It comes up fully configured with VMware Tools and network access.

Blog-in-a-Box[/b]: An Appliance setup to serve up a one of these blogger tools: WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal, etal. – VM is ready to host at an xSP or at home. Easily portable/expandable/clonable when you hit it big.

Domain/Site-in-a-Box[/b]: A Wizard sets up whole or parts of a small business domain (LAMP, Forums, SMTP/IMAP/POP3 Services, DNS/DDNS, etc. all (re-)configurable, ready-to-host in an xSP or your own connection.

RemotePC-in-a-box[/b]: Anything/everything you need to securely access work-from-home, home-from-work, or from a Wi-Fi hotspot. Sets up working sets of Appliances that you can connect to from work and gives you reverse remote access at home. Basically a Network Admin's nightmare.

Digital Media Centre-in-a-box[/b]: This Appliance would search your whole home/small business network for DVR lineups, music, photos, videos, software packages, you name it and index them like a search engine.

TrustedPC-in-a-box[/b]: This is an Appliance that uses an ISO to keep read-only security software that scans your systems (like MBSA) and keeps a cryptographic checksum log of critical trusted computing files in small attached VMDK or USB fob. If you re-scan any system later so you can see what’s changed. This is a TripWire-like function but in an Appliance.

VirtualGrid-in-a-box[/b]: Some cool distributed/grid application that scales as it snowballs larger and larger as users download and run it. This would be like a SETI@home or the Great Internet Mersenne Prime search project. Obviously I need to work on the content plus a screensaver that offers the eye candy to make this viral.

Portable Virtual Desktop/Office[/b]: The smallest working set of applications you need to have a virtual desktop. Whether that's a bunch of games or some open Office and/or WINE, or every developer tool conceived.

Sorry for the -boxes. What are your ideas?

[Ken_Cline]

Here's my interpretation of your points:

you're forbidden to allow other people to access the hosted machine

I believe that should be "host machine" rather than "hosted machine". Basically, you can't create a VM that could potentially be used to exploit the host machine by farming data from it or something such as that.

package up the best of the recent interactive fiction competition submissions

(see ifcomp.org) and present a simple menu that would let anyone play

through the games

This one is a little more touchy, but far from impossible. If you were to provide a tool that allowed the end user to pull data from a source (such as ifcomp.org) and then provide a menu system to do something with that data, you're not violating any licenses of any kind. You're providing a tool that allows the user to accomplish a task. If the user chooses to point your tool at improper data, you can't control that. It's much like an ISP can host pornographic material and not be held liable for the content - he's providing a service...

I could (easily) be mistaken, but that's my take...

KLC

[rcardona2k]

>As I am not a lawyer, I may be reading the license agreement for VM player incorrectly, but wouldn't some VM that hosted fora be unuseable (legally) in VMware player?

Why are you assuming VMware Player for the challenge? There is an entire Server category which I assume would be fine to develop and operate in a hosting fashion, i.e. via an xSP. While VMware Server is beta today, I fully expect that Server appliances would be allowed to run on VMware Server 1.0 and be accessible to others.

I would not encourage any *-in-box solutions to be run in Player.

[ccostan]

Here is an Appliance I would like to see.

Disk Resizer :[/b]

A basic machine that I could attach VMDKs to and power up. Once powered up, it would 'sense' the OS, Read the partitions and allow me to resize them.

I know that there are other ways to do it (i.e. Ghost, Partition Magic, etc.. ) but I would like to have a fool proof applicance with minimal steps to resize VMDKs for Windows OSes in particular.

Carlo.

[continuum]

Just boot into this iso

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/systemrescuecd/systemrescuecd-x86-0.2.15.iso

[vmusraus]

Looks like i'm the only one but I think the VMGrid concept is a good idea. A VmGrid appliance could be used to manage a group of grid agents. A grid agent would be an "Esx agent' of some type deployed to Windows server/workstations and then a collection of workstations could form a resource pool that ESX servers have access to based on defined policy's

Workstations would be used more efficiently, which i'm sure would keep Intel happy.

Maybe just a little bit too much to ask this year.